Monday, 6 June 2011

At the turn of the last century, night photography came into its own as an artistic genre. In the early years of the medium, capturing images under low-light conditions was nearly impossible, but by the early twentieth century, faster films, portable cameras, and commercial flashbulbs freed artists to explore the graphic universe of shimmering light and velvety darkness that reveals itself in the hours between dusk and dawn. Modern camera artists were captivated by the many moods of electric light: the softly shining globes of street lamps, glittering skyscraper façades, dazzling neon signs, the intimate chiaroscuro of lamplit rooms. Night photographers were also particularly fond of rain, snow, ice, and fog—for both aesthetic and practical reasons. Wet pavement and rising mist can lend pictures an atmosphere of lush poetic reverie; they also reflect and diffuse the available light, shortening exposure times.

Sid Grossman (American, 1913–1955).

In the 1930s, inspired by the pioneering work of Brassaï in Paris and Bill Brandt in London, photographers began to turn their attention to the social life of the city at night, from the convivial hubbub of Little Italy's Feast of San Gennaro to the top-hatted elegance of opening night at the opera. Others were drawn to the gritty underworld of nocturnal outlaws or to lone figures on the margins, picturing the night as a shadowy realm of pleasure, danger, and transgression. More recently, artists have delved even deeper, adapting techniques of police and military surveillance (hidden cameras, searchlights, infrared film) to pry into hidden corners of the night, driven by an ageless desire to make darkness visible.

This installation surveys the ways in which modern photographers have used the camera to explore the visual and symbolic potential of the nocturnal image. Among the featured works are moody Pictorialist nocturnes by Edward Steichen and Alvin Langdon Coburn; shadowy street scenes by Brassaï, Bill Brandt, and Robert Frank; electric light abstractions by Italian Futurist Giuseppe Albergamo; and aerial views of suburban Los Angeles at night by contemporary artist David Deutsch. Drawn entirely from the Metropolitan's collection, the installation includes approximately forty photographs, ranging from the late 1890s to the present.

Visit Details :
The Metropolitan Museum of Art- New York
26 April 2011 - 18 September 2011
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York, New York 10028-0198

6 May - 10 July 2011
In October 2010, Simon Norfolk began a series of new photographs in Afghanistan, which takes its cue from the work of nineteenth-century British photographer John Burke. Norfolk’s photographs reimagine or respond to Burke’s Afghan war scenes in the context of the contemporary conflict. Conceived as a collaborative project with Burke across time, this new body of work is presented alongside Burke’s original portfolios. The exhibition takes place in conjunction with an earlier complementary exhibition in March 2011 at the Queen’s Palace in the Baghe Babur garden in Kabul, supported by The World Collections Programme and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which resulted from a series of workshops with Afghan photographers, featuring work by Fardin Waezi and Burke alongside Norfolk’s own work.

The Level 2 Gallery programme has been made possible with the generous support of Catherine Petitgas

Sunday, 5 June 2011

The exhibition presents 54 colour photographs shot in New York by Kamilo Nollas, using his cell phone, during the period 2009 – 2010, when he lived there as a Fulbright Scholar. He utilised this medium, on the one hand, in order to have a camera permanently with him, on the other hand, in order to ascertain whether digital technology could bring about the same renewal of the arts, as that brought about by the construction of the first Leica in 1925.
The photographs, on the surface, appear similar to those taken by amateur photographers on an everyday basis on their cell phones. However, the artist, in arraying the images in the exhibition, sought to set up a short lesson in photography, showing what is and what is not worth photographing. His frames aren’t usually formally balanced, and are full of characteristic fluidity, constant motion and alternating images.
As a photographer, who has the obligation to return the images he “took”, he exhibits the personal and decisive moments he experienced in New York.

LFPH

November 2012

My photography

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100 Years 2001 is a series of 101 portraits in black & white arranged according to age. The series begins with an 8month baby and end with the portrait of an old man at the age of 100years.Each pictures represent the age rather that the person and someone can see the journey of a whole lifetime by looking those portraits.